


Track Me, Hunt Me, Kill Me, Please

by anti_ela



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 13:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1650092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anti_ela/pseuds/anti_ela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he’s being followed, but it’s alright. Nat told him to think of Bucky like a wild animal, wounded, confused, so he would. If you want a squirrel to come to you, you have to be soft, gentle, slow. He could be those things, really. He used to be them all the time. it’s hard to make a 6’2” frame seem nonthreatening, but since that’s a consideration he’s had since day one post-serum it should be alright. God, please let it be alright.</p>
<p>Of all places, he ends up at the barber. You can’t cut out experiences, but you can cut off your hair. (Natasha told him about drug tests, and how even trace amounts can linger in your hair for years, and he never kept his hair long before but sometimes it just needs to go.) He goes to a place where his barber hums music he doesn’t recognize and calls him “son,” and it feels nice. The razor barely makes a dent, but the prickling on the back of his neck tells him something’s changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Track Me, Hunt Me, Kill Me, Please

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as an anon fic.

He knows he’s being followed, but it’s alright. Nat told him to think of Bucky like a wild animal, wounded, confused, so he would. If you want a squirrel to come to you, you have to be soft, gentle, slow. He could be those things, really. He used to be them all the time. it’s hard to make a 6’2” frame seem nonthreatening, but since that’s a consideration he’s had since day one post-serum it should be alright. God, please let it be alright.

Of all places, he ends up at the barber. You can’t cut out experiences, but you can cut off your hair. (Natasha told him about drug tests, and how even trace amounts can linger in your hair for years, and he never kept his hair long before but sometimes it just needs to go.) He goes to a place where his barber hums music he doesn’t recognize and calls him “son,” and it feels nice. The razor barely makes a dent, but the prickling on the back of his neck tells him something’s changed.

When he gets out, a food truck is parked across the street. It’s a stupid idea, but it’s what he has. So he buys two lemonades (hand-squeezed) and two plates of chicken and waffles. Another new thing that had seemed ridiculous, but Stark had insisted that it was the most genius idea of the past century, and he figured Tony would know. And most importantly, it would have no associations.

The most difficult part of this plan was carrying everything, but he eventually got to an empty picnic table and sat down. He toyed with his food, but he was determined not to eat it all—after seventy years of waiting, seventy years of silence, he wanted to break bread with his friend. After an hour, the food was cold, and his lemonade was gone, and a small part of him said he was wasting his time.

After three, he felt like an idiot.

When a homeless woman came up to him, he gave her the food and some change and just left. Bucky might remember him, but that doesn’t mean that he would trust him. You can’t cut an animal out of a trap without getting bitten, and when it’s free it’s just going to run, leaving you with blood on your hands. And who wants to return to the person who failed to keep you safe in the first place? Who wants to return to the hands with your blood under their nails?

The walk home was forever and too short at once. He should go run, or ask if he was needed, or go to the gym and ruin yet another punching bag, but sometimes you just get tired. There’s a difference, he’s found, between your body being young and inexhaustible and your will being old and, in small but important ways, depleted. So he climbs his stairs, and smiles at his neighbors, and inside was only thinking of the man he’d failed to save.

If he’d been alert, aware, it wouldn’t have happened this way, but maybe that’s for the best. When he opened his cupboard to take down a glass, an explosion of pain hit his side. He was knocked down and the glass shattered and there was a hand at his throat and a knee on his chest and somehow, somehow, he knew not to fight. So he was still, small, easy. He could hear his attacker’s breath, ragged, uneven, and of all the things he could have said what came out was “It’s okay, Bucky. You’re okay.”

It’s hard to navigate when you have no guiding light. Sam would be better at this, Steve thought, but Bucky didn’t know him. Steve would have to be enough. When Bucky eased up, squatting on his haunches, ready to move, Steve slowly stood, turned on the light, swept up the glass. He let Bucky watch him. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he thought. ‘Non-confrontational sweeping—that’s my specialty.’ his hands were cold, and his apartment vast. Yet this shadow on the floor could make it seem close.

When he was done, he put everything away and sat on the floor (about three feet between them, his legs crossed, hands gripping ankles, body toward Bucky but angled slightly away).

He couldn’t help it: he smiled. “Hi,” he said, looking at the floor. “I missed you.”

He could feel the other man tensing, deciding, and he waited. “I didn’t know you,” Bucky said. “To miss you. Didn’t know I… should.”

Something clenches Steve’s chest, but he breathes out, “I know, Bucky.” Looks up. “And that’s okay, too.”

"No," Bucky said. And it wasn’t, maybe wouldn’t be.

They were quiet for a while, then Steve asked, “Would you like some pecan pie? I have some leftovers in the fridge.”

Bucky let out a breath, shaky and wet. “Yes. Yes. Please.”

Serving cold, sticky pie on white paper plates with the afternoon sun coming in through the blinds to a man he’d thought dead for seventy years would probably always top his list of strangest experiences. But when Bucky looked over, shy, and just said, “Milk?”

Like he didn’t know if it was okay to ask for something for himself, like he didn’t know Steve would bring him the moon if he needed it.

"Yeah, Bucky, you can have milk."

You can have my shield, he doesn’t say. You can have my shirt. You can have my apartment and my records and my list of modern strangeness. I bought a comic the other day because I thought you’d think it was funny, and you can have that—everything, everything. But all Steve did was pour a glass of milk.

Bucky ordered the dishes when he was finished: glass on plate, fork in glass, plate pushed toward Steve. Not polite, just… automatic. He curled in again when the food was gone, so Steve cleared that away, too. When he was standing at the sink, he looked down at Bucky: the friend who’d always been sharp, dashing, well-groomed, together; the friend who taught Steve how to comb his hair down; the friend who’d made Steve stop wearing those paisley shirts… Dirty, hair long, clothes practical.

Did HYDRA know what it was doing when they took all that away, or was it happenstance? What was the first thing they took from Bucky? Was it his name, or his hair? How do you erase someone as vibrant as James Buchanan Barnes from inside his own mind? (They took his death, a part of him answered. When someone takes your death, things just go wrong.)

"Do you want to get cleaned up?" Bucky’s eyes are wide. "You know, shower? Mine’s a little small, but the water pressure is really nice, and the hot water lasts forever, so you can just stand there, you know. Think." He clears his throat. Looks away. What an interesting floor he has.

He’s about to retract the offer entirely when Bucky stands, back to the wall, and gestures at Steve.

"It’s this way," he says. "You won’t regret this, promise." He shows Bucky everything—towels, shampoo—then leaves.

He spends the next half hour sitting on his couch, rubbing his hands together, listening. How can you tell if you’re doing it right? How can you tell if you’re helping? He could run a campaign across continents easier than this. How is this not something he was trained for?

When Bucky comes out, his hair is still wet and he’s missing most of his armor. Steve opens his mouth to ask, and Bucky says, “Dirty.”

Of course. Of course. He should’ve—well, he can do it now. “Do you want to borrow some of my clothes? They’re clean.”

Bucky looks down, hair dripping. “Yes.”

Steve goes into his bedroom, pulls a few things down, and turns around to find Bucky inches away. Steve looks down at his hands (he’s spent a lifetime looking away, after all) and says, “For you.”

Bucky places his hands on Steve’s where they’re grasping the clothes. “Thank you,” he says, and Steve doesn’t know what to do. He swallows, breathes in. When Bucky shifts his grip to the clothes and walks away, Steve shudders. What if you get what you always wanted because your friend doesn’t know who he is anymore? What if you get what you always wanted, and it’s not what you want anymore? If he could have anything, he’d be the scrawny kid under Bucky’s arm again. He’d be the weak one any day.

He’s sitting on the bed when Bucky returns, hands to either side of himself. Bucky looks lost. Steve’s shirt is a tent, his pants are too long. Bucky’s hair is soaking Steve’s collar. And he just stands in the doorway, waiting. Steve gestures to the comb and scissors beside himself, and Bucky takes it in. nods. He folds himself up in front of Steve, and for a few seconds Steve just breathes. He starts to comb through Bucky’s hair with his fingers. It’s rough, tangled. The ends are cold.

When it’s ready, he picks up the comb and scissors. He’s seen this done a thousand times, but somehow when they’re in his hands it’s foreign. He drops more hair from the comb than he cuts, and none of it is even. But it’s better, and soon the back is done. “Turn around?” Bucky does, somehow, without standing or making it look awkward. And soon Bucky is sitting between his legs, looking up at Steve, face open, trusting, and Steve’s hands are trembling. He puts down the comb and swallows.

As carefully as he can, he brushes the hair away from Bucky’s eyes with his fingers. Each lock that he selects is held at the ends, and when he cuts it he places the shorn hair by his side. Someone else could do it better, but no one else is here.

When it’s finished, Bucky’s face is clear, his hair is dry. Steve places a hand under Bucky’s chin, and the other man obliges, eyes ever open. It looks as bad as Steve thought it would. But even so, it’s better. More right.

"Do you want to see?"

Bucky nods.

Steve leads him to the only mirror in his apartment. Bucky turns his head slowly from side to side, then looks at Steve. “Thank you.”

Steve shakes his head. “We’ll get it fixed later, but for now—”

But Bucky interrupts. “No. Thank you.”

It means something Steve can’t parse, so he looks down. The shirt that had been clean was now covered in loose strands, and Bucky sees it, too. He pulls the shirt off, and Steve’s grip on the doorframe tightens. Pain and violence is written on his skin.

In another life, Steve wouldn’t have recognized electrical bruises. He wouldn’t know what it looks like when a knife tears into flesh just to cause pain, or how to tell if the stitches were put in using anesthesia. He wouldn’t know to look for burn marks in clusters. Trees grow rings and people grow scars, and both of them were very, very old.

"I’m so sorry," he whispers. It echoes in the small room, meaning nothing. Captain America can save humanity from extinction, but small-scale cruelty carries on every day. Bucky doesn’t respond. Steve backs up, giving Bucky space, and Bucky follows. They’re standing in his bedroom again, and Steve can’t move back anymore because his calves have hit the bed.

Bucky’s eyes fall from Steve’s face to the bed. “Tired,” he says.

Steve looks back at this marshmallow thing that means too much.

He pulls the cover off the bed and shakes the hair off. He arranges it on the floor with the decorative side down and the soft side up, then grabs his pillows, his quilt, and soon enough there’s a nest ready. Bucky watches. Steve is shy in front of him, and he can’t figure out if it’s because he’s wearing a shirt or because Bucky is not. He pulls off his overshirt, then steps out of his shoes. He’s still got an undershirt on, but it’s better, somehow. More natural. Bucky removes his shoes, too.

They stand there a moment, then Bucky kneels down and moves the quilt back. Looks up at Steve, who nods. He arranges himself under the cover, and Steve follows suit. They lie there, their arms touching, saying nothing. Bucky turns onto his side and props himself up, and when Steve’s only reaction is to breathe faster he drags his knee over Steve’s lap and places his left hand by Steve’s head. “Bucky,” Steve whispers, and then Bucky is touching his face, his cheek, his lips.

"Did we ever…?"

The question hangs a moment, then Steve groans out, “No.”

Bucky nods, confirming it to himself. “Just thoughts, then,” he says, and Steve knows Bucky’s not saying it for his benefit: he can’t tell. He doesn’t know the difference.

Steve closes his eyes. “Bucky, you don’t have to do this, you don’t owe me anything, please—” and lips, chapped and salty, interrupt. The kiss is quick, and Bucky leans back to observe once more. Steve’s hands find their way to just above Bucky’s knees.

He’s babbling again. “Bucky, I want this, you know I want this, but please not now. Please don’t hurt yourself for me. Please—” (another kiss, a little better this time) “—don’t confuse kindness for—” (Bucky’s hand trails down his neck, his fingers brush across his throat) “—god, Bucky, please don’t stop.”

Bucky cocks his head to the side. “Wasn’t going to,” he says. Steve sits up, trying to catch another kiss, but Bucky pushes him back down. His metal hand is cold on Steve’s shoulder, and his other is warm on Steve’s throat. Steve can’t say what he wants, never could, but it’s like Bucky to know and to act. Isn’t it?

But he realizes it doesn’t matter. There are seventy years dividing them, and Bucky might need years more before he’s really ready, before he’s really okay. And it would be wrong to let this happen tonight when they have what could be decades. Patience means something different to those whose cells may never die, and Steve is just starting to understand.

It takes convincing, but Bucky stands down. He lies down again, facing away. Two inches of air has never seemed so cold. Steve edges closer, puts his arm around Bucky, pulls him in. The floor is hard, and he can hear the sounds of the city outside, and it’s still daylight out, but it’s perfect. “Thank you for being alive,” he says into Bucky’s hair.

Steve is almost asleep when Bucky replies, “You, too.”


End file.
